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Travels in Circles was alone. It happened sometimes even with a cheetah for a companion. He really didn't understand why his daughter wanted to look at the cat. She had heard a tale -- or had she seen a tail? -- and thought Guides might offer something. He had smiled and nodded, turned and walked away. It made no sense to him and if the cat did not mind, he saw no reason to disappoint the child he still remembered as a filly.

He, like always, had no destination in mind. Some place with green, perhaps. Although he had taken to rubbing his sides against trees so that his cat might catch up with him. He had gotten the idea from his cat who frequently knotted and wound around his legs, fur rubbing against fur. Whether it actually had a use, he didn't know, but at least the bark felt nice.

There was no telling how long he had wandered for he never tracked time. It came and it went; that was about as much as he noticed of it. However long it was, his eyes now lit on something unique. A lush bush to the side of what appeared to be a collection of plants -- he thought it might be a family and they had decided to remain together unlike most plants that sprung up here and there without reason -- with two long but thin twigs sprouting from the top. There was a hint of a strange pink leaf and this puzzled him.

Was it an upside down tree or some strange bush? He moved closer. There seemed to be more pink inside. With utmost carefulness he approached before nestling down before the plant. Oh yes there seemed to be pink inside. He smiled and nudged his nose into the bush...

That was a disappointment. It seemed the bush was not so unique, it merely had a lovely pink-haired kin in it. Well this time he did not think the bush was talking. That, too, was a shame. A talking bush would be a very neat thing.

"Mourning that you are not a neat pink bush or an upside down tree or a talking plant," he replied. It must not have affected him too deeply for the next moment, "Are you hunting?" (Hiding, of course, was much too obvious.)

How interesting. In all his journeys, he did not think he had ever heard of a brother or a brother who was a pest. It made him wonder if all brothers were pests. Perhaps that was why he had never met his sister. He was quite sure he had never been a pest -- did those not usually have wings? Surely he would remember if he'd ever been a winged creature.

"Maybe you should take off his wings and then he would be less of a pest?" he queried. It was a perfectly logical idea.

As for what he was up to, he looked back at her -- his tail thumped against the ground, swished back and forth in the dirt, repeated -- as though attempting to divine the answer from her. "Oh, I think I'm up to about that young tree over there," he nodded his head over to the tree that his horns had skimmed against. Though why she wanted to know how tall he was...

The laughter was not at all something he was unaccustomed to. And he thought nothing of it -- he did wish he knew what exactly he said that was so amusing, it might have come in handy -- until she spoke. He blinked, slow, tilted his head. The question was a touch confusing. Had she asked him the same question unseriously before? He hadn't heard it.

"My mother would say a lack of direction," he decided. Oh yes, his mother would say that. If his cheetah could talk, he might as well. Or maybe everyone would. He himself would. He knew that much.